The Democratic candidate in a California Congressional race has publicly encouraged illegal aliens to vote and help her campaign. Francine Busby, the Democrat in the special election to fill Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s 50th District seat, was actually taped telling a Spanish-speaking audience in Escondido that “you don’t need papers for voting.” Cunningham, if you recall, is in prison for accepting bribes.

Busby, a Cardiff school board member, is in a tight race with Republican Brian Bilbray who has mainly campaigned with a tough anti-illegal-immigration stance in a part of Southern California deeply affected by illegal immigrants.
Busby, who has focused on ethics reform, has called for a bi-partisan support of her proposal called the Clean House Act. Apparently she put ethics aside to deliver this week’s campaign speech to the area’s large immigrant – mostly Mexican – population.

Encouraging someone to vote illegally or even someone who is in the country illegally to work on a political campaign doesn’t exactly make for an ethical campaign strategy. That’s why Patterico’s Pontification’s writes that “if this doesn’t sink her campaign, we’re in worse trouble than I thought.” Power Line takes it a step further in posting that it’s hard to understand this as anything other than an invitation to voter fraud.

Like a good politician, a few days after the sound bite hit the airwaves, Busby practically denied saying the controversial words, causing a ruckus in the blogosphere. Wizbang http://wizbangblog.com/2006/06/06/francine-busby-update.php calls her on the lie, accusing her of portraying herself as an illegal immigration hard nose. Expose the Left has posted the transcript of a television interview in which Busby, not only denies her own taped words, but says illegal people should not be here and have absolutely no place in the democratic process or working on campaigns. Should we believe sound bite No. 1 or sound bite No. 2?